Please Indulge Me

For three sleepless nights
I wrote this one long letter to South Africa
I might have said way too much
But please do indulge me for a second

I wrote South Africa a letter
Telling them about those Jozi streets
Wet with that-ever-running-water from  uThixo-knows-where
Jozi streets filled with noise in accents not immediately placeable
The "abeg, mek you bring'am" requests
First heard in Lagos spreading across Calabar
into Bamenda and Buea
And now all too familiar to the Bameleke, Bassa and the Bamum

Jozi
Welcoming you to the heavy  standard  English vocabulary
That betrays the roots of its Ndebele and Kalanga speakers
as they argue about the Zimbabwean man whose name I refuse to mention

I wrote a letter to South Africa
Reminding them of the many apologies
That they owe the world for the continued existence
Of that not-so-free state they call Free State

I reminded South Africa that they need to tell me
When exactly they were going to let Africa's non-people free
The men and women fleeing the Congo
Because daily, men at war are masturbating on each others egos
Uganda's  hyperfemme boys suffocating under Ssempa's armpits and Bahati's bum
The intellectual Kenyan mass who remain the glime of a country lost in itself

When, South Africa, I asked.
Are you going to start seeing the pain on the faces of your Black poor?
When do you intend to learn a language other than violence?

This letter I have been writing for three days
But I know I will not send it
I have no moral authority to question you dear South Africa
For the country I live in feels like a war zone
A country at war with itself

May be I will send it tomorrow
Yes, just may be
And mostly may be not!